Overview
Each Collection TCIA publishes is issued a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) through DataCite. This API can be used to programmatically access Collection metadata such as their DOIs, titles and abstracts. Please note that this API was not developed by TCIA. See https://support.datacite.org/ for any technical questions. The TCIA Helpdesk may be able to assist if your inquiry is related to the content of the data itself.
Official Datacite Documentation
- DataCite REST API - https://support.datacite.org/reference/introduction
- DataCite REST API Guide - https://support.datacite.org/docs/api
- DataCite Schema - http://schema.datacite.org
TCIA Metadata in Datacite
TCIA utilizes the following Properties of the DataCite schema.
| Property ID | Property |
|---|---|
| 1 | Identifier (DOI of the Dataset) |
| 2 | Creator (Authors of the Dataset, preferably with ORCIDID)) |
| 3 | Title (Published Title of the Dataset) |
| 4 | Publisher (The Cancer Imaging Archive) |
| 5 | PublicationYear (The Year the Dataset was published in TCIA) |
| 10 | ResourceType (Dataset; Equivalent to a TCIA Collection) |
| 11 * | AlternateIdentifier (TCIA "Short Name" for the Dataset. These short names appear in various places such as https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/collections/ and https://www.cancerimagingarchive.net/tcia-analysis-results/) |
| 15 * | Version (The Current Version of the Dataset) |
| 16 * | Rights (Licensing Information) |
| 17 * | Description (Dataset Abstract) |
* indicates properties that are "Recommended and Optional" per the Datacite Schema whereas the others are required to create a DOI.
Examples
Retrieve a single DataCite record in JSON format.
For this example we are using a Published Collection called "Pseudo-PHI-DICOM-Data":
Return a list of DOIs using the TCIA provider id (tciar)
https://api.datacite.org/dois?provider-id=tciar
By default, only 25 records are returned. You can control the number of records returned using pagination options. For example, to return only 5 records
https://api.datacite.org/dois?provider-id=tciar&page[size]=5
or
Query on specific information populated in the DataCite schema
For instance, return the records published by The Cancer Imaging Archive that were published in 2016:
or
Use the "activities" endpoint to see metadata updates in JSON format for a specified DataCite record.
For this example we are using a Published Collection called "Pseudo-PHI-DICOM-Data":